Joining the Royal Canadian Air Force was the last thing on a Richmond resident’s mind when she first came to Canada as a nurse.
Elizabeth Reilly, a resident at Maple Residences in Steveston, trained to be a registered nurse at a hospital in London, England, before moving to Canada and working at Northwestern General Hospital in Toronto.
The 91-year-old recalled helping a lady deliver a baby at the hospital when she was encouraged to apply to the Royal Canadian Air Force and serve during the Cold War as a nurse.
“She asked me to join her and her husband, who was a Lancaster pilot during the war, and live with them since she had a spare room, which is what I did,” said Reilly.
“So I became part of the Air Force community almost before I joined the service.”
Reilly served as an officer and a nurse from 1955 to 1960 and was first posted in the Laurentides in northern Quebec.
Shortly prior to her joining the force, she applied for and received her flying licence at a local flying school at the age of 21 to prove a point to a man she was dating at the time.
“I said to him I’d love to fly and he said ‘no that’s not for women,’ so I went and got it much to everybody’s surprise.
“But of course, the Air Force wouldn’t accept me as anything but my registered nurse status, so that’s how it worked out.”
She told the Richmond News she often looked after dependents and occasional aircrew who hurt themselves.
“The dependents were all young people so with them there, our maternity ward was very busy all the time,” said Reilly.
“There would also be some airplane mishaps, like running off the runway or that kind of thing.”
When asked what her most memorable time was during her service, she brightened at the thought of owning the first Volkswagen sold in Quebec in the 1950s.
“Everybody laughed at me getting this bug that stayed at the nurses’ quarters,” said Reilly.
“But one winter it got so cold that none of the machinery on the base worked, except my little Volkswagen, so I basically gave the power to the whole base with my little box wagon.”
Reilly was also stationed in France during her service where she worked mainly at the hospital.
Despite everyone being “on high alert and had to be prepared,” Reilly said everyone was “extremely friendly, like one big family.”
“If one person is in trouble, everybody rallies around.”
In 1960, Reilly married her husband who was a fighter pilot and lived in France, near the border of Belgium, and had to leave the service.
She didn’t become a nurse again until she moved back to Canada, working at hospitals wherever her husband was posted.
“It was a pity that was the end of my career with the Air Force. I wish we could have stayed on, but that’s how it was when nurses got married at the time.”
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